Fledgling_ a novel Part 14

She nodded and positioned herself so that she and Wright had Brook and I between them. She watched the front while Wright watched the back.

I went to Wright who was edging away from the heat of the fire, but still looking toward the backyard. He glanced back at me.

I touched his mouth briefly with my fingers to keep him silent, then stepped ahead of him, acting on what I had heard and he had not. For the second time that day, I had to evade his hands. One more gunman was coming around the house, around the fire at a run, perhaps to see what had happened to his friends. He was my third deer. Best not to make noise until we had to.

How many gunmen were left? How many had there been? There hadn't been time for me to listen and estimate, but I tried to think back to what I had heard. Then my concentration was shattered by the sudden, deep, quick spitting of Celia's gun. She had shot a man who had come around the house from the front.

The man fell, and even if no one had heard the strange spitting sound of Celia's gun, someone must have seen him go down. The element of surprise was gone.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun of the man I'd just killed, shouted to the others, and all of us sprinted for the shelter of trees. They would give us cover when the other gunmen came to see what the shooting was about.

We all reached the trees in time. I was with Brook behind the oak, which, high above, was already catching fire where it overhung the house. I gave her the gun and she frowned, studying it. Meanwhile, Wright and Celia were already firing. I could see men firing back from both the front and the backyards, but they could not aim very well because they lacked cover where they were. We had trees, but they had only the burning house. If they had tried to reach trees that might have s.h.i.+elded them, Wright or Celia would have gotten a clear shot at them. If we survived, I would get Wright and Celia to teach me to shoot.

Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. I heard it and froze, wondering how we could avoid being caught either by the gunmen or by the police. Then Brook looked up from her gun, and I realized she was beginning to hear the sirens, too.

And the gunmen heard them. The shooting from the other side dribbled away to silence. Wright and Celia stopped their very careful firing because suddenly they had no targets.

I could hear the remaining gunmen running, their footsteps going away from us, toward the street. I showed myself, walking out away from the tree, providing a target for anyone who had stayed behind.

No one shot me.

I ran to the garage, lifted one of the doors, and glanced toward the side of the house, where I hoped Wright, Celia, and Brook were paying attention.

They were coming, all three of them, at a run.

I opened the other garage door and waited until they were all in the cars. Then I got in and we fled.

We fled slowly. Wright said we shouldn't speed, shouldn't do anything that might make us memorable to anyone who saw us or bring us to the attention of the police. He was leading this time so his judgment kept Brook's speed down. There were no neighbors near enough to see the house or report that we'd left it (and left several corpses) just after the fire began. In fact, the guns had made so little noise that I wondered whether human ears had heard them with the houses so far apart. It was almost certainly the smoke that had caught someone's attention. That meant the emergency call probably went to the fire department. Firemen would arrive, begin to put out the fire, find the bodies, and then call the police. They would also find the gas cans. We had to avoid getting involved in the investigation that would surely follow. I had seen too many police programs on Wright's television to believe there was any story we could tell the police about this that would keep us out of jail.

"Where are we going?" I asked Wright.

"G.o.d," he said. "I don't know. Back to the cabin for now, I guess."

"No," I said. "Your relatives are there in the front house. Let's not lead anyone to them."

"Do you think that's likely? Whoever these people are, they don't know anything about me." He shook his head. What he had been through seemed to be too much for him suddenly. "Whoever they are ... Who the h.e.l.l are they? Why did they try to kill us? I've never shot at anyone before-never even wanted to."

"We're all alive," I said.

He glanced at me. "Yeah."

"We should find a place to stop when we've gotten a few miles farther away. We need to talk with the others, find out if they know of another place where we can stay for a while."

"Any place they know is probably as dangerous as the place we just left."

I sighed and nodded. "We need to be far away from all this," I said. "I can't believe that Brook was with Iosif for twenty-two years, and yet she knows of no relatives but my mothers, no friends or business a.s.sociates."

"I was wondering about that," he said. "Do you think she's lying?"

I thought about that for a moment, then said, "I don't think so. I just think she knows more than she realizes she knows. Maybe Iosif told her not to remember or not to share what she knows with anyone outside his family. I mean, as things are, I don't know where to begin a search for more of my kind. I don't even know whether I should be looking for them. I don't want to get people killed, but I have to do something. I have to find out who these murderers are and why they want to kill us. And I have to find a way to stop them." I paused, then fidgeted uncomfortably. I already had the beginnings of a burn on my face and arms, and had left my jacket in the house. "Wright, would you be cold if I used your jacket?"

"What?" He glanced at me, then said, "Oh." I helped him struggle out of his jacket, pulling it off of him while he drove. Once I had it, I covered myself with it as though it were the blanket that I had lost, probably leaving it beside the oak tree. The jacket was warm and smelled of Wright and was a very comfortable thing to be wrapped in.

"You and I are conspicuous together," he said. "But you could go into a clothing store with Celia and pa.s.s as her daughter. You could get yourself some clothes that fit and another jacket with a hood, maybe a pair of gloves and some sungla.s.ses that fit your face."

"All right. We should get food, too, for the three of you. It should be things you can open and eat right here in the car. I'm not sure when we'll dare to settle somewhere."

"I should be back at work on Monday."

I looked at him, then looked away. "I know. I'm sorry. I don't have any idea when this will be over."

He drove silently for a few minutes. We were, I realized, still headed southwest toward Arlington. Once we arrived in Arlington, he seemed to know his way around. He took us straight to a supermarket where we could buy the food we needed. Once we were parked, we moved over to the larger car to talk with Celia and Brook.

"Don't you need to sleep?" Brook asked me as soon as we got into the backseat. "Doesn't the fact that it's day bother you at all?"

"I'm tired," I admitted. "You're probably all tired."

"But don't you sleep during the day?" Celia asked. It occurred to me that they had been discussing me. Better that than terrifying themselves over the fact that several men had just tried to murder us.

"I prefer to sleep during the day," I said, "but I don't have to. I can sleep whenever I'm tired."

Brook looked at Celia. "That's why we're not dead," she said. "They came during the day, thinking that any Ina in the house would be asleep, completely unconscious."

"Why didn't it help her save her mothers?" Celia asked.

Brook looked at me.

"I don't know," I said. "Have either of you ever heard of a community being destroyed the way my parents' communities were? I mean, has it happened before anywhere else?"

Both women shook their heads. Brook said, "Not that I know of."

"Maybe that's it then." I thought for a moment. "If no one was expecting trouble, probably no one was keeping watch. Why would they? I don't know whether I usually slept during the day. My mothers did, so I probably did, too, just because it was more convenient to be up when they were. I'll bet the symbionts had adapted to a nocturnal way of life just as symbionts had in Iosif's community. But I don't know. That's the trouble; I don't know anything." I looked at Brook. "You must have spent time at my mothers' community. Wasn't everyone nocturnal?"

"Pretty much," she answered. "Your eldermothers had three or four symbionts who did research for them. They were often awake during the day. I guess it didn't help."

I looked at Celia. "Did Stefan always sleep during the day?"

"He said he got stupid if he didn't sleep," she answered. "He got sluggish and clumsy."

"Iosif had to sleep," Brook said. "He would go completely unconscious wherever he happened to be when the sun came up. And once he got to sleep, it was impossible to wake him up until after sundown."

Wright put his arm around me. "You're definitely the new, improved model," he said.

I nodded. "I think maybe someone's decided there shouldn't be a new, improved model."

"We were talking about that," Brook said. "About how maybe this is all because someone doesn't like the experimenting that your family was doing. Or someone envied your family for producing you and Stefan. I don't know."

"How could it be about her?" Wright wanted to know. "Those guys were human, not Ina."

"They may be symbionts," Celia said.

"Or one of them might be a symbiont and the rest hirelings," Brook added.

Wright frowned. "Maybe. But it seems to me they could just as easily be ordinary human beings who imagine they're fighting vampires."

"And who have focused only on my family," I said.

"We don't know that. h.e.l.l, we're in the same boat you are, Shori. We don't really know anything."

I nodded and yawned. "We probably know more than we realize. I think we'll be able to come up with at least a few answers after we've gotten some rest."

"Why are we in this parking lot?" Brook asked.

"To get food for you," I said. "After that, we'll find a place to park in the woods. We can get some sleep in the cars. Later, when we're rested, we'll see what we can figure out."

"I thought we would go to your house," Celia said to Wright.

"His relatives' home is too close by," I said. "I don't want them to get hurt or killed because someone's after us-or after me. I don't want that to happen to anyone. So no hotel for now."

The two women exchanged another look, and this time I had no idea what they were thinking.

"Let's go buy what we need," Wright said. "Celia, while Brook and I shop for food, can you be Shori's mother or her big sister? There's a clothing store ..." He opened the glove compartment, found a pencil and a small wire-bound notebook. "Here's the address," he said, writing. "And here's how to get there. I did some work here in Arlington last year. I remember the place. This clothing store is only a few blocks from here, and it's a good place for buying cheap casual clothes. She needs a couple of pairs of jeans, s.h.i.+rts, a good hooded jacket, gloves, and sungla.s.ses that will fit her face. Okay?"

Celia nodded. "No problem if you have money. I spent most of what Stefan gave me in Seattle. He's going to-" She stopped, frowned, and looked away from us across the parking lot. She wiped at her eyes with her fingers but said nothing more.

After a moment, Wright got his wallet out of his pocket and put several twenties into her hand. "I see an ATM over there," he said. "I'll get more-enough for a few days."

"We need gas, too," Brook said. She looked at me, then looked past me. "I have my checkbook and a credit card, but they're both Iosif's accounts. I don't know whether using them will attract the attention of the police-or of our enemies. I have enough money to fill our tank, but if this lasts, if we're on the run for more than a few days, money is likely to become a problem." There was an oddly false note in her voice, as though she were lying somehow. She smelled nervous, and I didn't like the way she looked past me rather than at me. I thought about it, and after a moment, I understood.

"Money will not be a problem," I said, "and you know it."

Brook looked a little embarra.s.sed. After a moment, she nodded. "I wasn't sure you knew ... what to do," she said.

And Wright said, "What do you expect her to do?"

"Steal," I said. "She expects me to be a very good thief. I will be. People will be happy to give me money once I've bitten them."

He looked at me doubtfully, and I reached up to touch his stubbly chin.

"You should get a razor, too," I said.

"I don't want you getting in trouble for stealing," he said.

"I won't." I shrugged. "I don't want to do it. I don't feel good about doing it, but I'll do what's necessary to sustain us." I glanced at Brook, feeling almost angry with her. "Ask me questions when you want to know things. Tell me whatever you believe I should know. Complain whenever you want to complain. But don't talk to other people when you mean your words for me, and speak the truth."

She shrugged. "All right."

My anger ebbed away. "Let's go buy what we need," I said.

"Hang on a minute," Wright said. He wrote something else in the wire-bound notebook. Then he tore out the page and handed it to Celia. "Those are my sizes. If you can, get me a pair of jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt."

She looked at the sizes, smiled, and said, "Okay."

We left them. Celia and I took her car-one of Iosif's cars, she said-and drove to the clothing store. She found it easily, following Wright's directions, and that seemed to surprise her.

"I usually get lost at least once and have to stop and ask somebody for directions," she said. And then, "Listen, you're my sister, okay? I refuse to believe I look old enough to be your mother."

I laughed. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-three. Stefan found me when I was nineteen, right after I'd moved out of my mother's house."

"Twenty-three, same as Wright."

"Yeah. And he's your first. You did very well for yourself. He's a decent-looking big bear of a guy, and he's nice. That jacket of his looks like a way-too-big coat on you."

"When he found me, when he stopped to pick me up, I couldn't believe how good he smelled. My memory was so destroyed that I didn't even know what I wanted from him, but his scent pulled me into the car with him."

Celia laughed, then looked sad and stared at nothing for a moment. "Stefan would say things like that. I've always wondered what it would be like to be one of you, so tuned in to smells and sounds, living so long and being so strong. It doesn't seem fair that you can't convert us like all the stories say."

"That would be very strange," I said. "If a dog bit a man, no one would expect the man to become a dog. He might get an infection and die, but that's the worst."

"You haven't found out about werewolves yet, then."

"I've read about them on Wright's computer. A lot of the people who write about vampires seem to be interested in werewolves, too." I shook my head. "Ina are probably responsible for most vampire legends. I wonder what started the werewolf legends."

"I've thought about that," Celia said. "It was probably rabies. People get bitten, go crazy, froth at the mouth, run around like animals, attacking other people who then come down with the same problems ... That would probably be enough to make ancient people come up with the idea of werewolves. Shori, what did you get mad at Brook about a few minutes ago?"

I looked at her and, after a moment, decided that she had asked a real question. "She touched my pride, I think. She worries that I can't take care of the three of you. I worry that I won't always know how to take care of you. I hate my ignorance. I need to learn from you since there is no adult Ina to ask."

"Before I saw what you did today, I figured we'd be the ones taking care of you."

"You will. Iosif called it 'mutualistic symbiosis.' I think it's also called just 'mutualism.'"

"Yeah, those were his words for it. Before Stefan brought me to meet him, I'd never even heard those words used that way before. I thought he had made them up until I found them in a science dictionary. So you want us to be straight with you even if you don't always like what we say?"

"Yes."

"Works for me. Let's get you some clothes."

I wound up with two pairs of boy's blue jeans that actually fit, two long-sleeved s.h.i.+rts, one red and one black, a pair of gloves, a jacket with a hood, sungla.s.ses, and some underwear. Then Celia used the last of her own money as well as the last of what Wright had given her to get him a pair of jeans and a hooded sweats.h.i.+rt. Then we headed back to the supermarket to meet Wright and Brook.

"Brook and I are lucky we left our suitcases in the back of the car," Celia said. "A Laundromat would be a good idea for us, but otherwise, we're okay. Did you hear that saleswoman? She said you were the cutest thing she'd seen all day. She figured you were about ten."

I shook my head. I'd said almost nothing to the woman. I had no idea how to act like a ten-year-old human child. "Does it bother you that I'm so small?"

She grinned. "It did at first. Now I kind of like it. After seeing you in action today, I think you'd be G.o.dd.a.m.n scary if you were bigger."

"I will grow."